Please note: If you decided to play the video below, I very strongly recommend that you turn down the volume on your computer speakers just before the 1:10 mark. Trust me on this one.
It may be a baby, but it’s still a Great White, and they have a nasty bite.
Back in April, I travelled to Moncton on business and stayed at a hotel where I found this pamphlet on the desk in my room:
As you can see, they didn’t go for more delicate phrasing like “What to do in the event of a hotel fire”. The title’s much closer to “How to not die while staying at our establishment.”
The French don’t have it any easier. The title they see translates to “Hotel Fires!! What to do to stay alive?”
Many of the numbered points in the pamphlet don’t simply use the word “fire”, but accent it with two exclamation marks: “Fire!! in your room” and “Fire!! in another part of the building” are two examples. Perhaps the writer took some inspiration from the band Panic! at the Disco.
“Few people are burned to death in fires.” This is true – in a fire, smoke inhalation is far more likely to (ahem) smoke you than the actual fire itself. I wasn’t disturbed by reading this fact, but I can see some hotel guests being a bit disturbed by being told which method of death was the more likely one.
For some reason, point number seven in the pamphlet reminds me of what just about every electrician trying to make small talk while doing repairs has said to a customer at one time or another, often with a country-fried drawl: “It ain’t the volts that kills ya, it’s the amps!”
“Sure, it’s unethical, but it’s just a business,” says Jordan Kavoosi, who runs Essay Writing Company, one of those places where students who don’t want to write essays or term papers can have someone else do it form them. "I mean, what about strip clubs or porn shops? Those are unethical, and city-approved."
Plagiarism, Inc. is an article about Kavoosi and his company located in the Apple Valley suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul. It’s an amusing read, what with Kavoosi’s somewhat sleazy line of work, the even more sleazy way he treats his employees and the generally sleazy way in which comes across in the article.
Here are the answers to the question “Why use an essay writing company?”, which appears on Essay Writing Company’s site:
The real answer is much simpler and needs only one bullet point: “Because you’re unethical and lazy.”
Pictured above: One of the video screens from Jeremy Wright’s karaoke birthday party at Tequila Sunrise last night.
It’s July 1st, Canada Day! Happy birthday to my adopted home country. Now get drunk, mofo!
In honour of Canada Day, I present to you Canadian Stereotype Comics by Kate Beaton:
…because cats are jerks:
One of the songs in my MP3 collection that’s on heavy rotation is Cage the Elephant’s Beck-ish, slide-guitar southern-rock-y ode to “doin’ what you gotta”, Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked. It practically begs for an accordion version, so I’m learning it in order to add it to my repertoire, which could stand a little refreshing.
While I haven’t learned the song well enough to perform it unaccompanied, I’ve had just enough practice to do it as an accordion karaoke number, which I did at last week’s Loser Karaoke. Loser Karaoke is a regular Thursday night event at Tequila Sunrise where having a good time trumps singing ability. It helps that Jason Rolland is an entertaining karaoke host. As an added bonus, it’s where a lot of the people from Accordion City’s high-tech, startup, social media entrepreneur scene come to cut loose. For more on Loser Karaoke, check out their Facebook page.
I should feel ashamed to say this, but a decade’s worth of public accordion playing has attenuated my ability to feel shame: the reason I know about Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked isn’t because I’m dialed into the alt-rock music scene. Thanks to middle age, I used to be with it, but they’ve since changed what “it” was. I know about the song because of…well, a video game. Namely, Borderlands, which uses the song in its intro sequence:
For the curious (and the fans), here’s Cage the Elephant’s official video for Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked. Enjoy!